


Auriga

by redhandsredribbons



Series: Auriga and Apoidea [1]
Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Breathplay, Canon Compliant, Controlled Drowning, Dom/sub Undertones, Episode Related, F/M, Foreshadowing, Masochism, Prequel, Sadism, Secret Identity, Sherlock Holmes on the Asexuality Spectrum, Slightly Experimental, Stream of Consciousness, Violence, Wordcount: 100-1.000, sub!Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redhandsredribbons/pseuds/redhandsredribbons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The water is 10 degrees Celsius between his empty fingers. (Spoilers for S1E23/24.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Auriga

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PeopleCoveredInFish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeopleCoveredInFish/gifts).



> **WARNINGS:** Non-fatal drowning, breathplay, heavy BDSM desires, violence (since it's not BDSM without informed consent), covertly non-consensual relationship (secret identity), internalized asexuality shame, self-hate, reference to past abuse, drugs/needles
> 
> _Auriga is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy and remains one of the 88 modern constellations._

_**London, 2011**_

Irene pushes him into the canal in just a way that Sherlock can very _nearly_ pretend he himself jumped in. He himself was spontaneous, and exactly as unexpected as she needs him to be.

Her extrinsic hand musculature (extensor digitorum, extensor indicis, extensor digit minimi) gives a quick shove, over his heart. Exactly his heart, not the far too left-leaning place where ordinary others may believe the heart to reside. And then Sherlock's in the water. He wants her hands to paint an original work of art, to forget the glib aplomb of her existential crisis and leave a mark (a scar if she must) upon the world. He also really particularly wants her hands to hurt him.

Before Sherlock can speak, she is holding his head under the water.

Breath isn't possible. Escape isn't an option he'll consider, no matter the unnecessary opinions he receives from his lungs. Sherlock's ears are ringing with the water's pressure. The shrill tunes lower, deeper, pounding into his head, like bees buzzing warning, but there is nothing to warn against. The facts are simple. Sherlock needs her to love him, and no other woman will ever love him. He is suddenly certain of both these points, two statements exclusive of each other yet bound together, just as he is bound to Irene. As water Sherlock knows may well be filled with agricultural runoff, Gram-positive bacteria, Escherichia coli, scrapes against the inside of his nose, the outside of his brain, his certainty is more euphoric than he could have ever hoped: his loneliness, countered by painter's hands gripping his skull tight under the current of his own jerking limbs in water. He needs her to love-- Sherlock wants to laugh. Ah, that would be the lack of oxygen, then. Only very technically speaking, he is dying. He needs her to l-l-l-- he will get hard for her when she asks why he hasn't yet, as most everyone asks. He will, and he knows it with perfect clarity. He will because he has to keep her. He can never pull his hands away from her face.

But his hands aren't touching anything, any part of her, right now. He can't reach anything, there is absolutely-- no place. For him to grasp on.

The water is 10 degrees Celsius between his empty fingers.

Anders Celsius was a Swedish astronomer.

Anders Larson would have punished Sherlock for knowing that.

1701, 1744, Celsius, a professor of astronomy.

Sherlock needs her to--

He--

He rises, ears draining like broken taps of wine. Sherlock is let up, and then let go, coughing and snorting and with no control. Vision floating, rippling, in time with the echoes of the splashing in the tunnels. Clearing. His waterlogged clothing weighting him, begging him to go back under, begging Irene to make him.

Irene is smirking from one side of her mouth as Sherlock treads water, clearing his throat. Her mouth is nowhere near symmetrical, and Sherlock has never found symmetry to be as fascinating as something very slightly

 _off_. Something that doesn't precisely

fit.

"Come home and shower with me, beautiful," Irene says.

_**London, 2012**_

Irene has never hurt him again, not in this particular way, nor in any other tangible, physical sense. It becomes the most vanilla of relationships Sherlock has ever experienced.

No matter, he can't mistake that for boredom. She is the only woman, _the_ woman, and she lets him cherish her, though in return, he doesn't have even an accidental bump or bruise or scratch to show for it, much less Irene's name burned across the sensitive skin of the insides of Sherlock's thighs, or his finger broken in a car door, left to heal crooked as she murmurs against his jaw. He keeps nothing from her, so he tells her the things he fantasizes. 

Irene smiles and says, "Oh, my Sherlock," and returns to her work, much the same as she does when Sherlock inspects a new syringe he'll soon dirty in his arm. But there is nothing lacking between them.

She is always too fluid to seem careful, too prone to fits and starts of absolute surety of things that weren't her absolute surety yesterday, and back again. But he still thinks she's holding on to him like he is something especially delicate, as though Irene is curbing the flood of Sherlock's inevitable destruction, all while constellations rest on her shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and/or constructive critiques deeply appreciated. Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm just going to be over here trying to come to terms with the fact that I have now posted more het than slash on my AO3. If it's any consolation, Sherlock is queer (panromantic asexual) in my headcanon, and my upcoming post-S1 Joanlock fic will make that clear.


End file.
